'Behold, America!' an unprecedented collaboration

San Diego hasn’t always been the most cooperative place for arts institutions. ■ “It’s been crabs in a bucket for a very long time,” said Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego since 1983. ■ But things are improving, and there’s no bigger indication of that trend than “Behold, America!” — the first ever collaboration between the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Timken Museum. ■ Comprising nearly 175 artworks from the permanent collections of all three museums and spanning nearly three centuries, the exhibition allows each museum to showcase works by the other two institutions, placing each museum’s signature pieces such as the Timken’s John Singleton Copley (“Mrs. Thomas Gage”), the San Diego Museum of Art’s Georgia O’Keeffe (“White Flower”) and the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Ellsworth Kelly (“Red Blue Green”) in new and surprising contexts. ■ “One plus one plus one is bigger than three,” Davies said. “No question about it, because together we can tell this tale, this full sweep of American art, in a very compelling way.”

Davies credits former San Diego Museum of Art director Derrick Cartwright (now at USD after a stop at the Seattle Art Museum) with first inviting him and John Petersen (the late, former director of the Timken, to whom the exhibition is dedicated) to consider an unprecedented, mutually beneficial project.

“Derrick was very much about consolidating and collaborating and that spirit has been inherited by Roxana (Velásquez, the director of the San Diego Museum of Art since late 2010),” Davies said. “John Wilson ﻿(Petersen’s successor at the Timken) is also a great colleague. It hasn’t all been easy because there is fundraising involved ... but I think it will be an eye-opening event.”

Performing arts town

Not unlike American art itself, which for generations was considered (and considered itself) outclassed by European art, San Diego’s art museums have had their own issues with perception. Davies points out San Diego’s reputation as a “performing arts town,” led by two strong theater companies who have routinely made national news by sending productions to New York.

Davies and his colleagues believe their museums are too easily overlooked, despite the Timken’s remarkable collection, the excellent work being accomplished by Velásquez and her curators at the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s accomplishments, including its recent, universally acclaimed contribution to the regionwide, Getty-initiated “Pacific Standard Time” art extravaganza.

“It’s so important for the people who live in San Diego to realize that you don’t have to go to New York, Madrid or Paris to see great art,” said Amy Galpin, the curator of “Behold, America!” and editor of the exhibition’s comprehensive scholarly catalog. “We here in San Diego have these fabulous permanent collections, and people should be proud of that and excited about what they have here. That’s a big part of the impetus for this show.”

The New Jersey-born Galpin, who has a doctorate from the University of Illinois-Chicago, joined the San Diego Museum of Art’s staff three years ago for the specific purpose of curating and coordinating the collaborative project.